


Ghosts are What You Make Them

by Elmbird



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Established Relationship, Future Fic, Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-12 18:20:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29389032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elmbird/pseuds/Elmbird
Summary: Billy examines the meaning of fatherhood after an unexpected run in with Neil. Quick to anger he goes for a walk and remembers what brought him to where he is at today.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Comments: 8
Kudos: 65





	Ghosts are What You Make Them

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there,
> 
> It's been a minute since I posted something for this pairing. I started writing this story about seven months ago, and honestly I struggled with getting the story told in the way I wanted. There have been so many edits, and then it just sat for like three months until I was ready to revisit it. Still not sure if it is worth posting.
> 
> The time period for this piece is about 2004. Also it kind of relates to another story of mine, If all Things Were Good. 
> 
> Thanks so much for taking the time to read this, and as always feedback it appreciated.

Billy walks with the swagger of a man looking for a fight. It’s been along time since he’s carried himself like this. His boots hit the pavement like they did when he was seventeen, only he isn’t heading for the Camaro. He is smarter than he was back then, knows the last thing he needs to do is get behind the wheel. Too angry. Too raw. The thrill of driving reckless isn’t what it use to be either, and the Camaro is long gone. Sold to a used car dealership in LA for the price of a plane ticket. A ticket that all these years later is still priceless. 

It feels like what he thought was a healed wound has turned out to be a two decade old scabbed over sore, ripe for being busted back open. In a span of seconds Billy had been seventeen again, fourteen again, ten again… his body an accumulation of all those ages, and all the bruises. A patchwork of a history that could have easily broken him. All it had taken was one look at his old man, at Neil Hargrove.

_“Hey boss, there’s an old man here. He just put in an order for an engine part. He has the same last name as you- the Hargrove part. Says he’s your dad.”_

Billy had stared down an unwelcome ghost from his past while trying to stay in the present. It made him feel like he was being ripped in two. It wasn’t a social visit, there hadn’t been any hidden remorse behind Neil being there, standing in Billy’s place of work.

Neil still has that same goddamn air of unwavering righteousness about him. The same mustache that went out a style long ago had turned white helping to show his age and the passage of time. To Billy he had seemed smaller too, but maybe that had just been Billy’s age showing, no longer seventeen and dwarfed by Neil’s hate.

For a moment Billy had thought he was as much a ghost to his old man as he was to him. That maybe the sight of him got under his skin. Something like a flash of regret that died a quick death had passed over his cold eyes as he looked at Billy. 

Disappointment. Billy thinks Neil must have lived a life of it. Always so high and mighty, thought himself so high above everyone else that he spent life alone and bitter, even when in the company of others…

Maxine, Susan, and him haven’t talked about Neil in at least a decade, maybe longer.He had left Hawkins after the his divorce with Susan was finalized. Off to start a respectable family with some other women in some other small town. 

The choice to leave his car at work and walk home was the right one, anger clings to Billy’s skin, set his jaw tight. The city is a live, it’s Friday night and it just hit five o’clock. People spill out of buildings onto the sidewalk eager to start their weekend. It’s getting closer to being summer, but the miserable heat hasn’t started yet, and the nights get cold enough to make for cool crisp mornings.

People move out of Billy’s way. Maybe it’s the hard look that has settled into his eyes, or the leatherjacket, or the way he is walking. Whatever it is, people move. If he still smoked he would be half way through a pack, smoke trailing behind him. Decades ago Billy use to take this kind of anger to the quarry, would barrow Steve’s bat and take it to a tree, bark coming off in chunks. 

Neil had needed a hard to find engine part, still drives the same piece of shit pickup truck as he had back in the day. Him showing at Billy’s work had been that simple, and nothing more. The shop specialized in vintage cars, was know for working on sought after classics, but wouldn’t turn their noses up at run of the mill standards.

The red brick garage used to be on the outskirts of the city, but over the last decade the city has pushed out, build up around it. An old grain mill across the street turned into a coffee shop with artist flats to rent above. Billy still recognizes most of the faces in the neighborhood, that much hasn’t changed. 

_“So, this place is yours?”_

_“Part owner. I bought into the business.”_

In the little waiting room off of the four car garage Billy and his old man had eyed each other from as far a distance as the room allowed. The late afternoon sun spilling in through the glass front door heated up the space, the warmth of the day added to the instant unease of seeing each other for the fist time in some twenty years. Neil had shifted around, arms crossed, eyes darted over the room, like an animal looking for a spot to pounce from.

The walls of the waiting room have been filled with pictures for as long as Billy can remember, over the years he has add his fair share. Pictures of rebuilds, restorations, and the faces of mechanics new and old. One photo had caught Neil’s attentions. Billy saw it happen, saw as a familiar sour look spread across his old man’s face. The corners of his mouth pulled down in disdain, the mustache followed. 

It was the photo of Billy and Steve that caught his attention. Ten years younger they stood in front of a Mustang with its hood popped. The amount of oil and grease on Steve’s white t-shirt gives the impression that he was the mechanic, and not Billy. Somehow handing tools to Billy had gotten him that dirty. Off to the side of them, Kip, their dog, the one they didn’t choose, asleep in the grass, and oblivious to Jonathan Byers taking the photo. They lean into each other with an ease that only an old friend can capture true to the moment. Two smiles telling everything.

Neil had turned from it with disgust, eye beady and mean. 

For one moment, one selfish moment Billy had wanted to ruthlessly rub his old man’s face in it. Tell him about the good life he was living with the man he has been in love with since he was seventeen. Tell him about their daughter. Tell him about Annie and how he would _never_ be allowed near her. It would have been a betrayal thought, using Steve and Annie like that, as a weapon against his old man. The worth of his family would have been lost on Neil.

_“Leave your address. The part will be shipped to you when it arrives.”_

Something like denial had shown in Neil’s eyes when he realized that he was being dismissed by Billy. Before turning to walk away Billy had caught Neil’s look, had sneered at it, anger raises his heckles. 

“ _Billy! Where are you going?”_

The tone had been the same, exactly how Billy remembered it. A short fuse lit inside of him sending him off like a rocket.

“ _I will kick you out old man, you never gave me any reason not to. I don’t owe you shit! Get the fuck out of my shop.”_

He can still feel the energy that had flowed through him as he spun around and crossed the distance to say those words in Neil’s face, finger pointed, eyes fiery.

Neil hand’t been expecting it. When Billy was a teenager he fantasied about a moment like that one, finally getting to tell his old man off. Getting to taste his own flavor of righteousness. Living it left him feeling hollow. It gave him nothing back, returned none of what he lost to his father’s violet temper. 

Billy slows his pace, the building he is walking by, there use to be a park in its place, but that was years ago. The park had been there when Billy and Steve had first moved to Chicago in the late 80s. Mostly grass and a handful of benches it stretch out for most of the block. The two of them would meet Steve’s mom for lunch in the warmer months after she had gotten Kip.

Joan Harrington. Billy still thinks of her. The amount of time they had been in each other’s lives had been brief, but impactful. Her quiet acceptance of him something profound. It was something he didn’t know he needed and only understood later.

Joan, who died too young. Who would have made a better grandmother than she did a mother, taken more naturally to the former. Life’s not alway fair. A lesson that had made a younger Billy angry, but now, at this age, appreciative of what he has.

Steve and him thought about naming Annie after Joan. In the end both realized her birthmother had made a good choice when naming her. The thought of her being anything, but Annie not fitting. She was six months old when they brought her home. 

Cutting a couple blocks up Billy makes his way to a oneway street that is lined with trees in bloom. Figures if today is made out of ghosts he might as well not fight it, be the one to choose what is going to haunt him, what he will give space to. 

The four story apartment building on the corner is dark grey, Billy doesn’t remember it being that color, remembers it as an off white. He stops to take it in while shrugging his jacket off, having gotten too warm. This was Steve and his second apartment. The fire escape on the third floor where Billy use to smoke has potted flowers in the place where he would set a the boom box in the summer. 

This is where Steve and him had, _the fight_. So notorious in their relationship that it has simple come to be known as that. Neither of them could have guessed how much it would determine the outcome of their future, in the moment it had felt like they were dying a painful death. 

_The fight_. Jesus Christ, Steve and him had been young, and didn’t even know it.

The fight that drove them apart, if you ask them about it, they each have their own story of what went down, neither one more right or wrong than the other. Billy will say Steve kicked him out, and Steve will say he left. Each version reaches the same conclusion. As painful as it was, it had been needed. Not that either of them could have see that at the time. Steve and him had been together for almost eight years at that point. They had needed space to do some growing of their own.

Two realization had been what divided them.

That someday Steve was planning on going back to Hawkins to stand guard over a threat that might never come to pass. Keep his eyes on things when Hopper was no longer around to do so. Decades down the road, but still Steve’s end game at that point. He didn’t want that responsibility to fall on any of the shitheads, Max included.

_“So you’re telling me that you’re planning on dying in goddamn Hawkins? One way or the other? Fuck you, pretty boy.”_

Billy remember how he had spit the words out in Steve’s face, tongue razor sharp. It still pisses him off when he thinks about Steve’s bullshit plan. Get his more than a little hot under the collar.

The other realization had been Billy’s own desire to be a father. A way he had felt for awhile, but had been keeping to himself, not even sure if it could become a reality.

_“Whoa - whoa , wait, what? Since when?”_

The image of Steve standing with his hands on his hips, forever clear as day in Billy’s mind.

Those two things had been the perfect storm of truth coming to light.

Eighteen months. The fight that drove them apart took Billy back to California, then down the coast to Mexico, and back to Cali again. He worked odd jobs, slept on beaches, fucked other guys. Eighteen months was what it took for him to realize that not being with Steve was never going to not break his heart, and that he didn’t want it not to. He’d rather live his life heartbroken over pretty boy than move on. 

Surrounded by the concrete jungle of LA Billy had called from a payphone, and Steve had answered. It had been the first time the two of them talked since he left. Billy used every quarter he had, time hadn’t been on their side, minutes going by too quickly, with not enough quarters to slow them down.Shaking like a desperate junkie, Billy had feed the payphone his last one.

_“That’s the last quarter I’ve got. I don’t have any more. You’ve got to tell me, whatever you want pretty boy, for fuck’s sake just say it.”_

_“Jesus Christ, Hargrove, I want you. Okay? That’s - that’s all I want.”_

The Camaro had been sold for the price of a oneway plane ticket to Chicago.

Fucking it out had been easy. Their physical connection has always been inherent, base, primal. The conversations that followed his returned had been difficult, maybe because the conversation were bigger than any they had before. Conversations that the mainstream world told them two men weren’t allowed to have with each other. Or if they did it was heavily frowned upon, and the law wouldn’t acknowledge it - - still won’t. Maybe someday soon, though. Laws have been changing.

Steve and him might wear wedding bands, but they don’t have a marriage certificate, and Steve’s name is the only name on the adoption paperwork. They had other legal papers drawn up to protect their family. Navigating a system that doesn’t value them like it values the tall tale nuclear family. 

The desire to be a father had snuck up on Billy gradually. Bits and pieces of experiences formed thoughts. He would listen to a co-worker a few years older than him talk about the milestones and little moments as man’s son grew, would talked about those thing as equally important. Billy had listen with an interest he didn’t know he had, an interest that grew beyond passing. Came to find out that he was dismissive of kids in the way his dad had been dismissive oh him. His point of view shaped by his own treatment. The older he gets the more he understands how much his childhood shaped him, and how much he could, still can’t, let it be the thing that defines him.

At some level Billy always knew the abuse from Neil was wrong.Now that he is a father himself, that knowledge goes deeper, he is able to see it from the other side, and not only understandhow wrong it was, but speak to that wrongness. When Steve and him first adopted Annie he actually volunteered to see a shrink, did it for almost two years. He didn’t want any of his baggage landing on her.

Home is where the heart is, and Billy has turned into some kind of sap, because it is true. The house he share with Steve and Annie is all the things his home growing up never was. Same goes for Steve. There is a warmth and ease to their house that neither of them knew as kids.

The tell tell signs of two eight year old girls causing mischief is evident the moment Billy sets foot through the front door, a fine shine a glitter is spread on the wooden floor boards leading down the long hallway to the kitchen. Billy swears under his breath, it’s his own fucking fault he is the own that bought Annie the glitter at the art supply store.

The girls, Annie and Sasha are having a movie night, which is the case most Friday nights. Since the girls started elementary school, Maxine and Lucas have been trading off Friday nights with Steve and him. Date nights are a thing, even if it is nothing fancier than pizza, a six pack, and quick hard fuck, Billy still feels like he is living the high life. Having his cake and being able to eat it too, has always been an underlying drive for him, but he tries not to live this life feeling like he is getting away with something, doesn’t want to cheapen it like that.

Sounds a giggling carries through the left open backdoor call Billy down the hall, through the kitchen and then outside.

The girls are on a blanket in the grass, facing away from the house. Daylight is fading, the laptop’s screen illuminates them. Annie sits cross legged and Sasha lays on her stomach, both in over sized sweatshirts. Their hair is similar in texture, tight curls that need special care, good combs, and conditioners. Where Annie’s is rich and dark, Sasha’s shows a red undertone in bright sunlight. Half of Annie's stuff animals have made it outside, not to mention her art supplies. Steve must have moved her and Sasha outside after the mess of glitter happened in the hallway. 

Steve sits at the top of the wooden steps leading down to the yard. Last year he started growing his hair out, grey shows in the locks that are for the first time in twenty years as long as the summer after their senior year in high school. There is paperwork in his lap and a bottle of beer at his side. The pairing is common, a little work usually follows him home. They could fight about the work he brings home, but it’s not worth the effort or time.Steve must hear Billy approaching because he cranes his neck, head tipping back just in time to catch the kiss that Billy is leaning down to presses to his lips, muffling his greeting. The kiss lingers, both of them drawing in deep breathes through their noses, remembering to breath. It the kind of kiss that is telling, with it Steve admits his worry. 

Shoulder to shoulder, Billy has always liked that him and pretty boy are similar in height, that when they sit side by side, their shoulders touch. Tonight, Billy leans in a little closer, in a hushed voice so as not to interrupt the movie, he tells Steve about the day, about Neil. Between stealing sips from Steve’s beer andthe laughter from the girls, his anger fades to a dull hum and then to nothing.

Annie and Sasha are peas in a pod. Cousins that are as close as sisters, who are best fiends. The two of them are inseparable; laugh, share secrets, and hurt each other’s feeling like no one else can, and apologize twice as hard for it when they do. Billy hopes they are always this close. He didn’t have anyone to have this kind of relationship with when he was a kid. Confused loyalty with being soft, and worst of all confused softness with weakness. The later was the hardest for him to shake. 

Annie is a special kid. Billy understands that most parents think that way about their children, but he _knows_ it. An old arrogance showing itself in the pride he feels that came with becoming a father. 

When you become a parent everyone, parent or not wants to give you two cents about raising kids like their two cents are worth a whole goddamn dollar. The advice that has mattered has come from a select few. Lucas’ mother, Martha Sinclair is one of those few that Billy will listen to with out hesitation. With Maxine as her daughter in-law, Steve and him count as extended family. Martha has always been pointed with her advice. 

_“As she makes her way through this life she is going to have experiences that you can not relate to. The best thing you can do is listen.”_

Listen. It’s one of the many things Neil never did for Billy. He never had a voice with his father.

Lucas and Maxie picks up Sasha a little while later. Annie waves goodbye from the top step as the three of them drives off. The girls wave hello and goodbye like it’s the first time every time. It’s sweet. It’s one of those little things that adds to the goodness of life. There is no weakness in admitting so. 

It is getting late, the sun having set a few hours ago. Annie won’t brush her teeth unless Steve or Billy are there. It’s something they are indulging for the time being. Tonight it’s both of them crammed into the bathroom with her. 

She is fading fast, eyelids getting heavy,the toothbrush moving slower and slower. This is becoming the longest tooth brushing in the history of tooth brushing.Steve makes eye contact with Billy in the mirror. Says, _I’m growing old here,_ with one look. Billy _mm-hmms_ under his breath.

Annie is down two baby teeth. Another one is loose. Knocked the first one out while brushing. There had been a tearful declaration of, _“It was may favorite one_.” Overwhelmed by the surprise that not all things are permanent.

Later that night Steve and him had laughed about it while laying bed. Laughed at how serious and sincere she had been. Moments before it had just been tooth like any other one, but as she looked at it laying in the palm of her hand it had become her favorite tooth. That of all her teeth she could have a favorite one. The innocence of youth. 

Steve finally cracks, brings out the bubble gum flavored floss and pointedly sets in on the counter in front of her. She takes the hint. 

It is easy to stay up too late on a night like this one. The weekend stretching out before them, giving time to regroup from the long week. After tucking Annie in for the night Billy goes to the kitchen to get a couple of beers while Steve surfs the channels looking for something to watch.

Pulling two more colds ones out of the fridge Billy stops to study the front of it. Steve and him are the kind of parents that keep the fridge covered in drawings and pictures. Neither of them coming form a home that did. Neil would have called it _clutter,_ and Joan only hung professionally taken portraits in the Harrington house. All which hung in gilded frames along the long hallways, no relaxed candid shots ever made their way onto the front of the refrigerator probably because there weren’t any to put up.

A life worth of pictures hung by a variety of colorful magnets tell stories. There is Lucas, crouched down, hands cupped to hold a grasshopper, two sets of littles eye peering curiously at the insect. Another photo shows Max and Steve trying to get the girls to look at the camera while holding dripping ice cream cones, the day had been hot, and everyone cranky as hell by the end.

Then there is Billy’s favorite, Annie and him walking hand in hand, taken from behind, Billy is throwing a looking over his shoulder in time to catch Steve taking the picture. It had been their first vacation as a family of three. Annie was two, her dress yellow. Steve had bought black and white film by accident, but all these years later and Billy can still remembers the sunflower yellow of her dress, it stays bright in his mind.

A long time ago when Billy was on the verge out getting out from under Neil’s thumb Hopper gave him a pieces of advice.

“ _Remember kid, family is what you make it…”_

This is Billy’s family.

This is Billy’s version of fatherhood. This is the family he helped to build with Steve. Neil could show up every goddamn day, and he would never be able to take it away. The ghost of his father holds no ground here, not in the face of love.


End file.
